SimCity BuildIt

The new Mayor's guide to SimCity BuildIt

SimCity BuildIt is best enjoyed online: Your progress will be preserved (even across multiple devices). you will never miss an update with new content or improvements. and you’ll have a chance to jump on all the great deals in neighboring towns! Don’t worry if your connection gets lost--you can keep playing in offline mode. Just remember to reconnect as soon as you can in order to save the progress you made while playing offline.

HOW DO I SAVE MY GAME? CAN I PLAY IT ACROSS MY DEVICES?

There are three very good reasons for connecting through Facebook, Game Center, or Google Play in SimCity BuildIt.

First, you’ll keep your progress even if you switch to a new mobile device. Second, you can continue building your city across as many devices as you like using the same account, just make sure you play online regularly to keep them all in sync. Third, you get to visit all your friends’ cities too. What’s not to love? Just click on the settings icon on the left of your screen to sign in on one or more account.

WHAT ARE SIMOLEONS AND HOW DO I GET MORE OF THEM?

Simoleons (§) are everyday currency: They are how your citizens pay their taxes, you receive them as rewards for building and upgrading, they are what you spend and receive in trades and deals. You’ll need Simoleons for things like purchasing different types of buildings or upgrading roads. Simoleons (§) make the SimCity world go round!

Start earning Simoleons by placing residential zones, areas for your citizens to build their homes. As your city expands you’ll have more opportunities to upgrade those homes, collect taxes, complete shipments, make deals, and sell items to other players. Each of these actions will keep the Simoleons rolling in. If things get tight you can also convert your SimCash to Simoleons or purchase Simoleons in the store.

WHAT IS SIMCASH AND HOW DO I GET MORE?

SimCash is a little more ‘Mayoral’ than Simoleons. You’re automatically given a pile of SimCash when you start creating your city and you can use it to grease the palms of your contractors (amongst others) to speed things up a little. If you like, you can also convert SimCash directly to Simoleons.

Get a SimCash bonus for every City Achievement target you hit! Collect your rewards for achievements from your Mayor’s Mansion. SimCash can also be purchased in the store.

HOW CAN I GET GOLDEN KEYS?

Even more exclusive than SimCash, Golden Keys are worth their weight in, well, gold! Golden Keys can’t be bought with either Simoleons or SimCash, they must be earned by successfully completing cargo shipments or rebuilding your city if disaster strikes. They’re well worth acquiring as they enable you to purchase some very cool (and sometimes very famous) premium buildings, which you and your citizens will love. Be the envy of all your friends and other cities!

WHAT ARE THE GAME CONTROLS? HOW CAN I LOOK AROUND?

Use one finger to tap and drag as you interact with buttons, items, and the various elements of your city. You can move buildings by first uprooting them with a tap and hold.

To get the best views of your city: pan with a one-finger drag, zoom with a two-finger pinch-in or pinch-out, rotate by moving two fingers clockwise or counter-clockwise, tilt by moving two fingers up or down.

CAN I CHANGE THE NAME OF MY CITY?

Tap the settings menu and select ‘Change City Name’. Your name will be seen in the Global Trade HQ when you advertise your products, and by your friends when they visit, so make it a good one!

HOW DO I VISIT MY FRIENDS?

Connect through Facebook, Game Center, or Google Play in the game, and you will be able to visit your friends’ cities. Have a look around at their city, check out their stats, and don’t forget to drop by their Trade Depots to see what they have for sale! Click on the green friend icon on the left of your screen to find your friends.

HOW DO I INCREASE MY POPULATION?

It’s simple: Take care of your citizens! Happy neighborhoods attract more residents. Building and upgrading residential zones increases your base population. Maintain that population by providing essential services, and boost it even further with cool specialization services like parks, education, entertainment, and transportation.

When deciding where to place a specialization, you’ll see blue bars appear on your city map. These represent the population boost percentage you’ll get if you build where you’re hovering, so choose wisely! Your population counter appears at the top of your screen, indicated by the blue “people” icon.

HOW DO I KEEP MY POPULATION HAPPY?

If you fail to keep your citizens happy, they’ll abandon their homes and leave town. There’s one other very good reason to keep them satisfied—the happier the populace, the more taxes you will receive.

Check the smiley face happiness counter on the left of your screen. If the face is less than green, there are several ways to find out why. Opinion bubbles give you advance warning of problems like traffic jams, lack of services, boredom, or a dirty Factory in the neighbourhood. If red exclamation marks appear on the icons on the right of your screen, investigate by tapping them immediately!

They will hint at what improvements you can make to keep your citizens satisfied. You can also get a visual check on how happy each individual zone is by selecting the government icon in the services menu.

Factories produce raw materials to keep your city growing. Tap on a factory and select the material you want to create by dragging it on top of the factory building. When manufacturing is complete your items will appear on top of the factory, where you can tap to collect them. Unlock a wider variety of production materials and more efficient factories as you progress through the game!

With commercial buildings (e.g. stores and markets), you can combine and reuse materials to make new, crafted items. Use seeds to make vegetables, or craft metal into nails! Tap on your commercial building and tell your citizens what to craft by dragging the item on top of the building. You’ll see your finished, crafted items appear on top of the building when they’re done, and you can tap them to collect them. Unlock new crafting ‘recipes’ as you progress through the game!

Buying and selling materials is a great way to save valuable manufacturing time or increase your Simoleon levels. There are four main ways to do business; unlock the Trade Depot for selling, the Global Trade HQ for buying, accept (or refuse) deals that appear on your city map from other citizens or complete cargo shipments by sea. This last one can also net you Golden Keys as a reward! Don’t forget you can also visit friends’ cities to see what they have on offer.

When you place a residential zone, it gives your citizens an area to start building homes. This boosts your population, gets you closer to your next level up target, and keeps the Simoleons coming in.

Place a residential zone next to a road to start the building process, then tap the hard hat icon to view the building plans drawn up by the architect for the work ahead. Building plans show you the items your contractor needs to get the job done.

Once the building plan materials are gathered, drag the building materials on top of the building, and the work will be completed automatically.

HOW DO I MOVE MY BUILDINGS AROUND?

Press and hold a building, drag it to a new location, and hit the green checkmark to confirm the move. The white outline below the moving building shows where it will sit in your city.

Roads are the crucial arteries of your city, buildings must be connected to the rest of your city with a road in order to function. Roads not only carry traffic connecting your citizens to the outside world, they also carry vital services from building to building such as power, water and sewage! And don’t forget that your emergency services need those roads in order to reach homes in need! Tap the road icon on the right of the screen to build, upgrade, or bulldoze your roads.

WHAT ARE SERVICE MEDALS?

As Mayor, it’s important to pay attention to your citizens. Around your city, you will frequently see opinion bubbles appear over homes. Tap on them to learn your residents’ thoughts. For your interest in their hopes and dreams, your population will sometimes reward you with Special Items! There are several different types of themed Special Items. As you accumulate a collection, you can exchange them to upgrade the City Storage, open expansion zones, or instigate disaster challenges. If you just can’t wait for more Special Items, you can buy them with SimCash.

WHAT ARE CITY ACHIEVEMENTS?

City Achievements are awarded at your Mayor’s Mansion. These are granted for excellent Mayoral performance like hitting population milestones, being a super-achieving trader, or providing excellent services for your citizens. Get different Achievements depending on which direction you’re guiding your town. Solar Power? Education? Sin? There are Achievements to reward your choices.

When you earn Achievements, you receive bonuses in SimCash. Each Achievement has three star levels, with a SimCash reward at each level.

When you purchase, create or pick up items you must collect them to your inventory, which is kept in your City Storage building. Free up space in your City Storage by using stored materials to build and upgrade, and remember you can sell and trade items too (so keep checking out the deals that appear on your city map). To increase the capacity of your City Storage, collect storage-themed Special Items from citizens’ opinion bubbles, then tap ‘Increase Capacity’ from within your City Storage menu.

If space is getting tight, expanding your city area will give you more space to grow your population, keep them entertained, build more factories and commercial buildings, and generally unleash your creativity. After reaching the required level, tap outside your current city limits to see which bulldozer-themed Special Items you need to collect for each expansion zone.

CAN I REMODEL MY CITY? WHAT’S BULLDOZING?

Of course! Land is precious and you can rearrange your city however you choose, and it makes sense to replace older factories and service buildings for more efficient versions when you can. Use the bulldoze tool to take down roads, residential zones, and other buildings to make more space; you’ll even get a partial refund for those buildings originally paid for with Simoleons! Tap the road icon, then choose bulldoze to demolish sections of road.

To demolish a building, tap and hold the building you’d like to remove, then tap the bulldozer icon that will appear on the right side of the screen. Now feel free to rebuild as you please. Just remember, bulldozing a residential zone will reduce your population!

Your citizens have needs! The service requirements of your citizens are reasonable, although some we don’t like to think about too often…. As Mayor, there are eight main areas of well-being you must consider. If you don’t keep your citizens happy, they’ll move out!

First, government buildings are required to help run things smoothly and keep you solvent with Simoleon taxes and SimCash Achievements. Next, your neighborhoods need basic services like power, water, sewage, and waste (garbage). Last but not least, your citizens will feel reassured with emergency services nearby, like fire and police forces and health facilities.

Services build and maintain your population numbers: specializations boost them even further! Specializations add an extra-special layer of activity and excitement to your city that your citizens will want to be near, with some incredible buildings and stat-boosting functions. Choose your specializations by deciding how you want your city to look, or which activities you value most for your citizens. Different specializations make different types of City Achievements possible!

Parks, gambling, entertainment, landmarks, education, and transport all help to keep your citizens happy, occupied, and less likely to complain. They also boost the local population, so check out the blue bars that appear while you’re placing your specialization building! The bigger the bar, the bigger the population boost. Pretty special altogether, really.

HOW DO I GET MY CITY TO LOOK SLICKER?

If you prefer skyscrapers in marble and glass to edifices of brick and plastic, attract wealthier citizens to build in your city. If you make sure to provide plenty of the Services and Specializations to cover a specific area (Parks, Entertainment, Fire, Police, Health, Education, and Transportation), then buildings in that neighborhood will become increasingly attractive on future upgrades! The greater service coverage you provide an area, the better looking an area becomes.

Check out the land values of your city visually, by tapping on the residential zone icon on the right of your screen. You can also see how the next upgrade will affect each building.

WHAT ARE DISASTER CHALLENGES?

Nobody panic! Everything is under control! Dr. Vu has been…experimenting. He might not be everyone’s idea of a good neighbour, but he’s your ticket to getting some of those elusive Golden Keys. Unlock disaster challenges by building your population level nice and high and helping out with Vu Tower's construction.

Collect Dr. Vu-themed Special Items to unlock a disaster challenge. Will it come from the air? The sea? The earth? How big will it be? Are we feeling lucky? Will the llamas be okay? All there is to do now is wait…

Whew. Is everyone still here? When the dust has settled, it’s up to you to rebuild. Tap the area affected to see which materials are needed, and enjoy your Golden Key rewards when rebuilding is complete. I wonder what type of disaster we might see next time?